


Waking dreams

by mikansei



Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 09:49:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikansei/pseuds/mikansei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Family, from a little brother's perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking dreams

They’re fighting, which isn’t rare. They’re in the dojo, shinai abandoned in favor of fists, which is.

“She’s moving here,” Sougo says; “she’s moving to the city and I won’t let you ignore her forever.”

“Why—” Hijikata dodges, “do you  _want_  me to talk to her?”

“She stayed single for ten years—” swing, miss, “—because of  _you_ ,” hit – Hijikata stumbles. “Stop stringing her along!”

“I’m not!” Hijikata throws a punch at his shoulder and he darts out of the way.

“So look her in the eyes and tell her you don’t love her.”

“…I can’t.”

“Then what the hell is your problem?” He seethes, bracing for an answer he already knows.

Hijikata chances a breath. “If I got killed, and left her—”

“So don’t get killed.”

“It’s not that simple!” Hijikata yells, and he finally seems angry. “If we don’t get involved I can’t hurt her—”

“ _You’re already hurting her_!” His fist connects with Hijikata’s jaw; it’s satisfying, feeling his head snap to the side. “Don’t you  _get it_? You’ve been hurting her for ten years already!  _Nothing’s better this way_! Do you think—” His voice breaks and he can’t help it. “Do you think she doesn’t deserve to be happy?”

In the middle of the dojo, Hijikata is cornered.

He can tell Hijikata’s going to do what he always does when he’s thrown – which is to clam up and stop talking – so he pulls his fist back, more than willing to beat more conversation out of him—

“Sou-chan.”

Kondou-san and his sister are in the doorway; he sees her face and, for a second, he’s just a dirty little kid getting into fights on the playground. But the feeling passes, so he dusts himself off, puts on his best behavior and says:

“Welcome to Edo, sister.”

—

They’re getting married; his mind is reeling. “I guess I should’ve seen this coming,” is what he ends up saying, and he immediately wishes he hadn’t.

“I know you two don’t get along… I wasn’t expecting you to be happy about it.”

She smiles, but it’s strained, and he hates himself for it. She’s almost out the door before he comes to his senses, scrambling to his feet.

“Wait, sister— I’m sorry.” He bows deeply. “You were probably so excited, and I…” She cups his cheek and he raises his head, but he can’t quite bring himself to meet her eyes. “I always cause you so much trouble.”

“Oh, Sou-chan, it’s okay.”

He looks up; she’s really smiling this time.

“But did you really think we weren’t going to get married eventually? Toushirou-san even said you were the one who pushed him to talk to me at first.”

It was more like  _punched_ , but he leaves that part out. “I figured you’d date him for a while, find out what a jackass he is and then dump him.”

She giggles. “Oops.”

—

The ceremony is short and relaxed— relaxed for him, anyway; Sougo wastes no opportunity to prod the raw bundle of nerves that is Hijikata.

He doesn’t want to prod too hard, though. If that bastard ruins his sister’s wedding, he’ll have his head on a platter.

Her ring has an enameled dragonfly on it and Hijikata says something sappy about watching the dragonflies with her that one summer in Bushuu. Sougo gives the toast and doesn’t say anything bad about Hijikata at all; the guests breathe a sigh of relief. Sougo resists rolling his eyes and tries to get drunk on the fancy champagne.

But his sister smiles like the sun, and he thinks this wedding isn’t so bad.

(“I don’t see what the big problem is,” he overhears Kagura saying. “Those two fight like brothers already, uh-huh.”)

—

It’s in the aftermath of a car wreck that she breaks the news.

His sister is out of surgery in under an hour (it was superficial, the surgeon says). Hijikata has a concussion and has to be woken up if he falls asleep – Sougo volunteers, but Kondou-san says not to wake him up with a punch to the head, which takes all the fun out of it.

Once his sister is awake and talking, Hijikata gets up to sit in a chair by her hospital bed; Sougo threatens to handcuff him if he doesn’t stay put, which makes her curious. “He wouldn’t let the nurses look at him after you went in to surgery,” Sougo explains. “He made such a scene Kondou-san even called him my brother-in-law, and he only ever gets called that when he’s doing something I really won’t like. Then he fainted.”

His sister looks at Hijikata with amusement sparkling in her eyes. “It’s not that I’m not taking it well,” Hijikata says, pink with embarrassment, “it’s just, well… you got hurt, and you were in surgery, and… I have a concussion so I wasn’t thinking straight…”

“Not taking what well?” Sougo asks.

“I’m pregnant,” his sister says, and there’s a beat of silence before the room erupts in congratulations. Kondou-san slaps Hijikata on the back and laughs boisterously, and Sougo hugs his sister tight. “That’s why we were going out to dinner – to celebrate. By January we’ll be parents,” she says.

Hijikata shivers at the word “parents.”

Sougo laughs at him.

—

This is the only day he’ll ever like hospitals.

Sougo walks into the room as quietly as possible; his sister’s sleeping. Hijikata’s in the chair next to the bed holding his new baby girl in his arms, tears streaming down his face.

“Don’t cry, you idiot,” Sougo says and sits in the chair next to Hijikata to get a closer look. She’s tiny and pink and swaddled in green blankets, blue-grey eyes blinking at the world around her. Every once in a while she makes a little grumbly noise, and it’s just the most adorable thing.

They sit like that for more than an hour, Sougo with his arm around his brother’s shoulders, his niece’s tiny hand around his finger, and his sister smiling her dazzling smile at them all; today is perfect.


End file.
